"Found"

Rev. Matthew Miller

FROM THE GOSPELS Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32  Click here to watch the sermon "Found"

Today’s reading is something of an exercise in creative editing. We get the setup: The wrong kind of people are coming to Jesus and listening to him. Luke names them as tax collectors and sinners. Which is a little funny. Tax collectors AND sinners. That first designation is fairly specific, the second- not so much. No one likes paying taxes. Even when we know that in a healthy, functioning society taxes are used to provide things like roads and schools and emergency services, we don’t love handing over our money not fully knowing if it’s going to be used in the way we’d like it to. What’s worse is when you know that the person taking your taxes is skimming off the top and is literally getting rich at your expense. Okay. The beef with those folks is understandable. Maybe they should have a category all to themselves. And sinners, well… that’s pretty broad. I mean, that could be anyone.  

The devout, the faithful, the very religious people of the day think this is just a scandal. We don’t even have to imagine what this is like, because it appears to be the side effect of religion in every age, whether that religion is a belief in some kind of God or gods. It’s an easy enough trope. It’s John Lithgow in the movie Footloose standing in his pulpit preaching the evils of dancing. It’s the two-dimensional zealot plotting a terrorist attack in the latest political thriller on Netflix. There’s no one scarier to us than the person who thinks that because they’ve found God, anyone who hasn’t found God in the same way should either be converted or cast out. 

This fellow welcomes sinners, which I suppose is bad enough. But then he eats with them. They’re complaining about Jesus, of course. This, by the way, is why the phrase, “hate the sin, love the sinner,” is so problematic. It does what God, and certainly Jesus never do, it defines a person by their worst moment. To say one “loves the sinner,” persists in identifying someone with the worst thing they may have done. It also demonstrates a level of presumption that is blasphemous. There are a whole lot of things that we may not like that we mistakenly call sin for that reason. Likewise, there are even more things that scripture and Jesus clearly identifiy as sinful that we are happy to excuse and sanction as long as they serve us in some way. If we cannot even be clear in our own hearts about sin and the things that truly alienate us from one another and from God, we certainly have no business calling anyone else a sinner. Still the objection these good religious folks have with Jesus is that he doesn’t seem to know or care who he’s eating with. If he did, surely, he wouldn’t sit down with them. 

Anyway, on to the editing. Because Jesus’ response to this accusation against him is what his response always seems to be, he tells them a story. Well, three stories really, Today, we heard the third. I understand the reason for the edit. On its own this one story has inspired any number of works of art. It has captured the imagination of believers and unbelievers alike and has come to be a common idiom. The return of the prodigal son. Of course, that idiom is part of the problem. Jesus is obviously a gifted public speaker and he knows the rule of three, that ideas are more memorable, engaging and persuasive when they are presented in groups of three. Plus, there is a definite progression to these stories that create an expectation that Jesus upends for those making their accusation and for those of us who are quick to assign the title of prodigal son or daughter to someone. 

In the first story (that we didn’t hear) Jesus asks, “which of you having 100 sheep and losing one does not leave the 99 in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost?” The answer is no one. No one with any business sense puts 99% of their inventory at risk in the hope of recovering the lost 1%. And yet in Jesus’ story it happens and there is a big story to celebrate. And that’s nice, right? Sheep are dumb and everyone loves this kind of feel-good story. 

But Jesus isn’t done. What woman having ten silver coins and losing one doesn’t do all she can to recover it. I mean ten percent of your money is nothing to sneeze at. That makes a little more sense. And when she finds it, she throws a big party for her friends and neighbors, which sounds a little excessive, but still. That’s nice, isn’t it?